Driver assistance systems for highly automated driving are currently in the initial stage. Provisions regarding a functional safety concept frequently exist in only very rudimentary forms and are largely still safeguarded via human intervention. However, a market launch requires functional safety concepts that are fully or partially fail-operational, meaning that critical errors are detected and a minimally required function is able to continue to be safely carried out even in the case of a fault.
Current systems in the automotive environment are largely designed to be fail-safe, which means that critical faults are detected and the function is brought into a safe state.
Systems for highly automated driving are technically complex. They require high processing power and a large memory. The complete implementation of such large systems in the form of fail-safe or fail-operational systems is currently possible only with great difficulty. In addition, no highly integrated components that satisfy the required safety demands while simultaneously providing high processing power are in existence. Known electronic consumer components usually do not meet any greater demands with regard to functional safety.
German Patent Application No. DE 10 2014 213 245 A1 describes a method for processing data for a driving function of a vehicle is known. Here, operations are synchronized at the data level rather than at the cycle level.